They sat directly facing the opening to the water, with Mrs Harvey between them; so that when, by their sudden start up, they raised the cloth, it formed an inclined plane, down which dishes, plates, bottles, pies, bread, and meat, glided, not majestically, but too rapidly, into the sea. Then, oh! what a clamour! Above the jingling of broken bottles and plates, the crash of dishes, and the exclamations of the gentlemen, arose the never-failing shriek of the ladies. And then came a pause, whilst they silently watched the last dish as it gracefully receded from their view. “Oh! faith,” said Mrs Harvey (surprised by her emotion into using a gentle oath), “I think it is time to go home _now_.” “Faith,” said O’Gorman, “it is time to leave the dinner-table at all events, since the things have been removed; but as to going home, we have so little to carry, or look after, besides ourselves and--hic--the ladies, that I think, with all respect to Mrs Harvey, we may--hic--take it easy. I wish I could get a drink of water to cure this hic--hiccough; for I am certain, Miss O’Brien, I need not assure you--indeed I can appeal to you to bear witness--hic--that it was the _want_, not the quantity of liquid, that has brought it on.” The “want,” however, had made Bob’s eyes particularly and unusually luminous; nor did Kate take his proposition “to launch all the hampers and baskets, after their recent contents, into the sea,” to be any additional proof of his self-possession; and when, with a caper and whoop, he sent Mulholland’s basket to the fishes, her suspicions that he was slightly elevated became considerably strengthened. “Mrs Harvey,” said Mr Sharpe, “you think your party unfortunate. I have been upon a great many parties of this kind, and I assure you I have seen far more unpleasant affairs--(Gentlemen, here are a few bottles of wine that have escaped the watery fate of their unhappy companions). Now, the very last party that I was on last season, three or four of the gentlemen quarrelled (pass the wine if you please), and one of them, in the scrimmage, was knocked over the rocks into the sea.” “Mercy on us, Mr Sharpe! was he drowned?” “Why, no, but his collar-bone was broken, and his shoulder dislocated. But a worse accident happened in coming home.” “What was it?” “Poor Singleton had come, with his wife and two nieces, in a job carriage; the driver got drunk, and overturned the whole concern, just where the road branches off down to the strand; they rolled over the cliff, and fell about twenty feet; the horses were both killed, and the whole party dreadfully injured, barely escaping with life. Then, the quarrel after dinner (by which Jones got his collar-bone broken) led to a duel on the following morning, in which one of the parties, Edwards, fell; and his antagonist, young O’Neill, got a bullet in his knee, which has lamed and disfigured him for life. Pass the wine, gentlemen.”